Books and E-Books (During a Crisis)

I think for some (admittedly perhaps a very small percentage of the population), one challenging thing about the lock-down is that the libraries are closed (and even for them, it probably barely breaks the top ten things I hate about COVID-19).  There is no question that some Gen Z'ers (ok, my children) ask why I have so many books in the house when there are libraries and various electronic books.  (Most of which were purchased long before Kindle was even "a thing," but I digress.)

Now I can simply point to the shelves and say these books won't be going anywhere if the internet goes down, though it is true reading them by candlelight would be a challenge if the electric grid also goes down...

I guess I've read around 30% of these books (with the box to the right full of books that I plan on reading and then putting out in the Little Free Library).  I have just about the same amount of books downstairs, but I've only read 10% of them.

This pandemic will have to go longer than a year (and I'd also have to lose my job) to really put a dent in this stash.  Which is a good thing over all.

Fortunately, the library does still process their electronic books through Overdrive/Libby.  I currently have Kathleen Jamie's Findings on my phone, and may add Sightlines, though her third book of essays, Surfacing, is not available.  I'm debating adding Amitav Ghosh's The Ibis Trilogy but will hold off for the time being.  Some of Toni Morrison's books, like Home, are available now (and I probably should add that before it gets too popular) but Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye in particular have very long waiting lists.  I haven't been able to track it down, but I should have The Bluest Eye in the Norton's Anthology of Women's Writing, which certainly should be downstairs somewhere.

I've downloaded quite a few interesting books over the years from the Internet Achive and Project Gutenberg.  I'll probably get through The Go-Between relatively soon, though I don't have any plans at the moment to tackle Henry James, for example.

I do have a Kindle reader installed on my home computer, and I have a number of titles that I have ordered.  I'm very much on the fence regarding Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz (NYRB).  I think this is a book that will take so long to read that I would prefer to read it on transit and so forth, which implies a long wait indeed!  I think I'll just keep watching to see if I can get a good deal through an on-line bookstore.  In terms of what is currently on the Kindle, I'm probably most likely to read Kingsley Amis's Girl, 20 and maybe Juvenal's Satires.

In terms of physical books, I'll go ahead and read the library books first (Camus's The Plague, Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and That Time I Loved You by Carrianne Leung).  Then I'll start working my way through the books on Libby.  I have several books of short stories I should tackle, including stories by T.C. Boyle, William Trevor and of course Alice Munro.  I might investigate genre fiction after this.  I've never actually read all of the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories, and that is something else I have in the house, and I might reread Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, where I have read nearly all of the novels at least.  In any case, I am surely not going to run out of things to read, even with all the libraries being closed (at least not when I have the complete run of Dickens and a large dollop of Trollope!).  Hopefully, you are equally well situated...